The Man With No Name

Daily Archives: November 25, 2006

I don’t really have anything all that intelligent to say about this, but I figured that I’d end up on the tail end of a google search with this entry’s title. Especially if a couple of people link to this entry.

I just googled it because (news flash!) I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing with dating. Over the past year I’ve gotten pretty good at first dates from the online world – they are all pleasant with conversation and laughs. But the second date is an awkward date because you’ve exhausted the basic small talk, and it’s time to really try and get to know someone on a slightly deeper level, and yet, the societal expectations that people are carrying around are still louder than their actual personalities. There’s still a lot of defensiveness and caginess.

And I think a lot of it is because of the third-date rule. I didn’t even realize, but the third-date rule is all over the place. I hadn’t even heard of it before Rachel gasped to Monica, “That’s my third-date sweater!” But I hear reference to it more often now, even once recently on a first date (that was weird). For those that don’t know, the Third Date is supposedly “the one”. “If either party declines sex on the Third Date, it’s a clear sign that the relationship is going nowhere.”

Now obviously that’s an item of contention for women – lots of women worry about the Third-Date rule and gnash their teeth and rend their garments, etc. But not as much has been written about how it’s kind of a lot of pressure for guys, too. There’s all this weird reverse psychology and game theory to it.

For example. Say you’re an innocent guy and an innocent woman. Then what happens is that you go out, and have a conversation, and go out again, and spend more time together, and eventually you might have some chemistry, and at some point you hop in the sack. It’s not on any particular date. It might be 2nd, 7th, or 18th – the point is it is entirely dependent on the dynamics between the two people. This is arguably the way it should be.

What’s funny is that most people will agree that it’s the way it should be. But the problem is that people aren’t that innocent, so all they can do is pretend to be.

So let’s say you’re an innocent woman and a worldly guy – a guy that is polished with the third-date rule. You go out for conversation. The guy knows there needs to be a smooth progression, so he makes sure to go for some sort of kiss or peck goodnight. The innocent woman is floored and flattered – first-date kisses don’t happen all the time. On the second date, the guy knows that the very next date is The Date, so he’s engineering a date that is a romantic open-ended get-together for some high-quality canoodling and maybe even some making out. The innocent woman is into him, but perhaps she’s wanting to move a little slower. Then the Third Date happens – the guy is pushing for sex to suss out the relationship possibilities. If the woman is into him but doesn’t want to have sex on a third date, then all of a sudden he’s letting her down easy and she’s wondering what the hell happened.

All right, now let’s say you’re an innocent man and a worldly woman. The woman is probably wondering why you didn’t kiss her goodbye on the first date. Then she’s wondering why you’re suggesting meeting at a fucking bookstore for date #2. She’s got no sense of hot-and-heavy progression so she might not even agree to date #3, or if she’s really into you, she’ll agree to come over to your house and then wonder why you’re not making a move. I imagine this has happened to me because a couple of times I invited dates over for tea, and they said yes, and then I… made tea. I mean, we literally drank tea. And then I happily wished them a good night, and then didn’t hear from them again.

Anyway, so say it’s two worldly people. It doesn’t matter if you’d both actually prefer to wait five or ten dates – there’s a third-date rule, and at least there’s the comfort of having a shared social foundation and silent language, one you don’t have to talk about. Maybe if you’re compatible, you have sex on the third date, and then months later blissfully admit to each other you could have waited longer. Or maybe if you’re both confident and sophisticated enough, you can obliquely refer to the third-date rule and mutually agree to lengthening it a couple of dates, without making it seem like an ambivalent semi-rejection of the other person.

But the whole problem is that you don’t know if the other person is innocent or worldly. That’s where the game theory comes in. Do I reject the worldly view, force the innocent route, and simply hope the other person is either innocent or is forcing it as well? Are they going the worldly route while secretly wishing they could be innocent? Do I just assume she’s worldly, go the worldly route, and risk offense if she’s innocent when I’d rather be innocent anyway? It’s a big mess. (If I were a really big geek, I would put this on a spreadsheet with multiplied percentages and everything.)

I basically hate the Third Date rule – and actually, I’m being a bit deliberately silly here because I know that the Third Date rule is not some ironclad thing everywhere – but there is the reality that everyone comes into dating situations with their own ideas of “timelines” and “progressions” that they then apply to the other person they don’t know, and that these timelines have to do with intimate enough subjects that they are difficult to talk about with someone you don’t know because it would weird the other person out. I think the Third Date rule just exists so that people have the excuse to have sex with people they don’t know without having to feel like they’re having casual sex, and without having to talk about it ahead of time.